Create a Panel of Ready-to-Hire Graduate Student Workers §

Pattern Summary §

Create a pool of pre-approved graduate students who can be hired quickly as short-term or hourly workers whenever OSPO funding becomes available.

Problem / Challenge §

OSPO funding may sometimes be small, ad hoc grants that need to be spent quickly. Funding that must be spent within a limited window can be lost entirely if there is no quick route to hiring someone to do the work.
Running a full recruitment process (advertising, applications, interviews) is time-consuming and often impractical for OSPO staff.
Without a pool of already-vetted candidates in place, OSPOs risk being unable to act on funding opportunities that require a fast turnaround, or having to rush recruitment under time pressure.

Context §

A university with an established or emerging OSPO.
OSPO funding may arrive in small, irregular or short-notice amounts.

Forces §

OSPO staff have relationships with colleagues who have knowledge of recruitment and hiring processes within their institution.
The institution has existing mechanisms for recruiting from a panel of pre-approved candidates who can be called on for short-term or ad hoc work. In these cases, typical hiring and interview processes are not required.

Solution §

Identify whether the university already has an institutional mechanism for pre-approving people to be hired flexibly for short-term or intermittent work. These mechanisms are sometimes referred to as "contingent worker" or "temp" systems and were often originally set up to hire temporary office staff.
Work with a knowledgeable contact involved in recruitment/HR to add a list of experienced graduate students that can also be hired as short-term, temporary staff in advance of any specific funding being available.
Maintain the panel over time, adding students as they demonstrate capability, so the OSPO always has a ready pool of people to draw on.

Resulting Context §

The OSPO can respond quickly to small or short-notice funding, without needing to run a new recruitment and hiring process each time. Students on the panel can be hired for anything from a couple of weeks of work up to a full semester or summer and can move in and out of paid work across that time as funding allows.

Additional Learning from Saint Louis University Open Source Program Office §

We set this up by reaching out to a business manager already familiar with the university's hiring systems. We asked them to place a list of capable students onto the mechanism the university uses for hiring office temps. Once someone is on that list, they are "on the books" and can be hired at any point that funding becomes available, whether that's a couple of weeks' worth of work for a few hundred dollars or a full semester's worth of work for someone who has already demonstrated capacity. This has let us make use of small or irregular amounts of funding that would otherwise have been difficult to act on quickly.

Known Instances §

Open Source with SLU, Saint Louis University

References §

Contributors & Acknowledgement §

Angela Newell — University of Texas at Austin
Ciara Flanagan — CURIOSS, 0009-0005-3153-7673
Clara Morella Teixidor — Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal)
Collin Capano — Syracuse University, 0000-0002-0355-5998
Daniel Shown — Saint Louis University, 0009-0002-5716-8835
David Lippert — George Washington University, 0009-0003-6444-9595
Kendall Fortney — University of Vermont, 0009-0006-3898-0771
Jeffrey Young — OSPO@GT, 0000-0001-9841-4057
Megan Forbes — Johns Hopkins University, 0000-0002-2611-1441

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